You have not really lived until you've had deep dish pizza. At least that is my opinion when it comes to the world of tasting delicious foods.

Years ago I was in Chicago and I was so impressed with the small deep dish pizza that my friends and I ordered from a local joint, so that we can eat it in our hotel room. The memory of that pizza has vividly stayed with me and I've truly had a craving for authentic deep dish pizza ever since then.

Recently, I was lucky enough to visit the windy city once again with my pizza loving wife. We were both so excited about trying a few of the famous pizzas known so well in Chicago. On our first evening, we decided to hit Giordano's pizza on Randolph Street. We showed up at 7:30 pm on a Saturday evening and the joint was packed, with at least 8 people waiting in the reception area. The host told us that it would be at least half an hour wait. We gave him our name and patiently waited with great excitement. It turned out that everyone in the reception area was called in within 15 minutes and we were also called in shortly after that. Giordano's is definitely a family oriented place! There were many large groups of families seated at large tables and many other groups of people in their teens and twenties eating pizza. The restaurant was very noisy but had a high energy about it. Our waitress spoke in a very down to earth way in her latin american accent. We were sitting at a table that was situated near the front of the restaurant and I couldn't help noticing that for the next hour there was still a line up of people waiting to be seated. It thought to myself "this pizza must really be good". The tables were checkered in red and white tops.

Two glasses of water, napkins, and clean plates were plopped down on our table within two minutes. We also ordered within two minutes. We shared a house salad which literally came to us two minutes later. The salad came with bread which was lightly toasted and pre-cut. It was quite tasteless and a little on the hard side so we only ate a very small portion so as to not wreck out appetite (to save our appetites for the "piece de resistance"). The salad was nothing to write home about, especially the canned black olives. The large cherry tomatoes, along with the red onions, made up for it a little. We could have passed on the carrot shavings.

The waitress was very friendly and always smiled. I liked the way she served us our first piece of pizza when it finally came (they said it would be 40 minutes but it was more like 50 minutes) - she artfully twisted the oozing cheese into the plate so that it wouln't run over.

We had ordered the a small (which is more than plenty for two!) Special Pizza with sausage, mushrooms, peppers and onions. The sauce was layered on top and all the ingredients were stacked between the bottom crust and the sauce. The moment of truth came when we first took a mouthful of pizza... The first bite was good. Interesting flavors with the tomato sauce on top, you could savor the muchrooms, peppers and onions with the cheese before the tomato flavor would seep in. Second and third bite later, and sadly, we were only slightly pleased with it. We expected more... flavor. The amount of sausage was... very minimal. My wife actually thought that they had made an error in out order and had her first taste of the sausage only half through her first slice.... They may as well have called it a vegetarian pizza. I guess if we were in the mood for vegetarian we would have enjoyed it more. We had two slices each and took two back to the hotel with us.

Overall, the Giordano's experience was only sub-par. Perhaps we had high expectations for deep dish pizza? and perhaps my fond memory of enjoying deep dish pizza in our hotel room had been embellished with time?

We quickly forgot about the experience as we were excited about site seeing the next day. We woke up early the following day and enjoyed a very informative architectural tour. Once the tour was over, our stomachs were screaming for food.... What better food to try than .... More deep dish pizza! We were in Chicago and still hopeful that we would find our winning pizza... So off we went to the closest Gino's East Pizza that we could find. We walked in around 1pm and found that the place was about half full with no wait at all. There was a White Sox game going on so many patrons were glued to the t.v.'s. We immediately noticed all of the graffiti décor in the place. I was impressed but my wife didn't care for it.

Our waiter was scruffy looking but very friendly and helpful. He came to ask us if everything was o.k. many times. We were in the mood for beer with our pizza so we ordered two Samuel Adams pale ales... delicious! We also ordered the house salad as we were told that the wait for the pizza would be 45 minutes. The salad came 20 minutes later and was absolutely delicious! The dressing had a hint of raspberry flavor but it was not too sweet overall. Between the salad and beer, we were quite primed for the pizza!

It finally arrived... and WOW... we both could not believe how orgasmic this was. We had ordered the bacon cheeseburger pizza and it was sensational! Every bite was a treat. The combination of ingredients was perfect. The delicious tomato sauce was mixed in with all of the ingredients and the cheese was spectacular. We had hit the jackpot. The small size pizza at this place only served 4 pieces and we ate it all! We were so impressed that the next day we considered trying it again for lunch but then decided to keep the first experience as a sure home run experience in our memories and so we went for deli sandwiches instead.

In conclusion, if you go to Chicago and you are curious about deep dish pizza (by the way, they call it stuffed pizza there), make sure you visit Gino's East first! You will definitely not regret it! If you have time and you are still in the pizza mood, Giordanno's is still worth a visit but don't be expected to be blown away. At least we weren't.

Remember... GINO'S EAST! ... is the place to go for deep dish pizza in Chicago.

I'll talk about steak on another hub ;)